Today, files comprise content as well as metadata. The metadata provides additional information about the file, such as its format, date and time, etc. Frequently, this metadata can be used by client applications to provide various functions.
Currently, storage devices face several challenges regarding media access programs. Among these are the CPU, memory, and disk usage expenses of the various “crawlers” and the mechanisms for notifying media-related applications (just “applications” hereafter) about changes to the media file population of the disks. “Crawlers” are programs that scan file systems and provide data about the media file population. They may be standalone, or parts (threads, perhaps) of an application.
However, in the known devices and systems, each user computer and client application creates its own proprietary metadata database for the files it accesses. This is inefficient and subject to duplication, errors, etc.